Thanks to new information from The INGA Foundation, we’ve just updated our page for this innovative and extremely worthwhile project – which is currently seeking support to help keep up with demand from local farmers:

Stopping slash and burn agriculture in Central America through innovative and sustainable farming

Across Northern Honduras, a region of critical conservation importance, slash and burn agriculture is still responsible for significant levels of deforestation. Land which has been slashed and burnt will produce a harvest for only a few years, after which the fertility of the soil is too poor to grow crops, and families have little choice but to clear more land.

Ally cropping with Inge trees (Image from The INGA Foundation)

Sixteen years of research in Costa Rica and Honduras, led by the University of Cambridge, has produced a new agricultural system based on alley-cropping with Inga trees, which naturally fertilise the soil.

Nearly 3 billion people around the world, largely in developing countries, depend on solid fuels (wood, charcoal, coal and agricultural / animal waste) for cooking and heating at home.

The burning of these fuels usually takes place in simple stoves or on open fires with poor combustion that releases large quantities of pollutants into the air.

Until recently, the largest known impact of this was on domestic health within poor households, where indoor air quality is causing around 3 million premature deaths every year.

However, a recent study by UBoC researchers, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, has complimented other findings which show that these emissions also make a contribution to ambient outdoor air pollution, and so will be partially responsible for hundreds of thousands of extra premature deaths around the world.

UBoC are embarking on an exciting new partnership with Leeds City Council and the Leeds Ecosystem, Atmosphere and Forest (LEAF) centre at the University of Leeds. The Leeds4Trees partnership aims to enhance woodlands and encourage conservation both in Leeds and overseas.

Leeds4Trees will see the first “forest twinning” between the Forest of Leeds (all the Council managed woodland in the Leeds City region) and forests in the East Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. The East Usambara Mountains lie within the Eastern Arc of Tanzania, a biodiversity hotspot which has been compared to the Galapagos Islands due to the high number of species that are unique to the area.

The storage and sequestration of carbon by tropical montane forests is poorly understood. Dom and his team quantified the biomass of forests in southern Ecuador and found that accumulation rates were similar to those observed in lowland humid tropical forests. This suggests that regenerating tropical forests do provide important carbon sequestration.

Another week of exceptional rainfall and flooding has brought damage and misery to large parts of northern England, Scotland and Ireland. First and foremost, help must be given to the communities and businesses badly affected. But as the floods waters recede, we need to ask whether we can help to prevent floods on this scale in the future.

The world gets serious about tackling climate change but the jury is still out on whether the UK government is.

Piers Forster, University of Leeds

The world grew up on 12 December 2015. Old differences between rich and poor, west and east were laid aside. Unbeknownst to anyone, 6 months ago and in secret, the sinking Marshall islanders had raised an army of over 100 ambitious nations that rose above the flotsam and jetsam of self-interest to create a stronger climate agreement than anyone thought possible.

(The 2012 scheme to green the Eiffel Tower by Ginger engineering firm, Vinci Construction and the architect Claude Bucher).

The Paris Agreement has been criticised by some NGOs for being too weak, because despite its lofty ambition to limit temperature rise to “well below 2C”, the actual country commitments, when summed, bring us closer to 3C. Yet I firmly believe that the negotiations last week achieved the strongest deal possible. Continue reading Paris Agreement on Climate Change→

Look North’s weather man, Paul Hudson, (left) came into the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment (where UBoC is based) on the 16th of December, to record an edition of the BBC Weather Show. Paul spoke to a number of staff from across the faculty including; Jim McQuaid, Kirsty Pringle, Duncan Quincey, UBoC’s Tom Bliss (right), Suraje Dessai and Lisa Smith. The programme is available on BBC iPlayer (Tom’s contribution can be heard at about 37 minutes).

The COP21 talks are drawing to a close in Paris this Friday, probably ending with the now ‘traditional’ all-night negotiating session. The optimism in the air is palpable but there are still some important last minute debates to be had that will ultimately determine how ambitious and legally binding the agreement is.

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United Bank of Carbon is a not-for-profit collaboration between businesses and environmental scientists, which protects and restores forests and other greenery, through environmentally and socially-responsible partnerships with local communities. We undertake research, support forest and woodland projects in the UK and the tropics that deliver CSR/PR benefits, provide carbon reduction consultancy, and arrange offsetting for unavoidable carbon emissions

Our details:

United Bank of Carbon is a registered Charity № 1133285.
We are also a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (company № 06924700).
Registered office: United Bank of Carbon, 1 Parliament Street, Harrogate, HG1 2QU, U.K.